The Peter Andrews Story
Born in 1940 on his parent's sheep property on the Wilcannia Road just out of Broken Hill, Peter has lived his whole life affected by the droughts and floods in the Australian country.
As a child he noticed their Broken Hill property was, in certain areas, littered with sea shells. Strange when you think this was a thousand miles from the sea! It showed him that the environment had obviously gone through many huge natural changes.
Over the years, this sparked his attention to look deeper into why Australia was falling into disrepair whilst man was doing everything he knew to stop it.
As a young man he left Broken Hill in the hands of his brother and bought a horse stud property in Gawler, just out of Adelaide. Whilst studying this very different environment to Broken Hill, he noticed that certain fundamentals seemed to be the same.
After a few years he decided to follow this path further and bought a run down, environmentally bankrupt property in the Upper Hunter River Valley.
Over a hundred years before this property had been a shining jewel. It was the first horse stud property in Australia and its site was chosen because it was the 'most beautiful and most productive land' around. Historic journals of the time attest to this.
Still, when Peter bought it, it was a wreck! The creeks had been redirected away from their natural path, the land erosion and salinity was nearly at a 'no return' status.
Whilst operating his thoroughbred horse stud 'Tarwyn Park', he decided to see what fundamentals were the same as the desert of Broken Hill and the lush pastures of Gawler.
Just as he thought, the natural cycle appeared to be the same.
Over the next 20 odd years, he became more passionate about finding what caused these environmental problems in the first place and how to turn them around, using natures own methods.
That sentence doesn't sound too much of a challenge, however in reality it takes a complete 'mindset' change to be able to even comprehend the basics of what he has found.
The difference in what man has done and in fact is still doing to the Australian country and what has to be done, cannot be understood using the same theories that are currently taught and accepted by scientists. It requires a paradigm shift in thinking.
Around 10 years ago, after repeated practical research under various natural conditions, he decided he had proved his theories enough to invite government and university scientists to test them.
Many came and most were amazed with what they saw and experienced. The ones that were able to 'think outside the square' became passionate supporters, whilst those caught in the 'this not what I was taught' syndrome became skeptics. They would come up with scenarios such as, 'it worked there but wouldn't anywhere else', or 'he must be doing something without telling us'.
In 1997 was able to put into place a legal R&D project with the Macquarie Bank and some corporate entities whose gain was taxation benefits. The 2 years of the project was well documented however the 'self interests' of many individuals, corporations and academics involved overtook the actualities of the research. The results and those behind them are still not free from civil or criminal investigation.
Some of the leading CSIRO scientists as well as several extremely highly acclaimed and respected professors and scientists from both here and overseas have now rallied behind him and work is well underway to use his theories in repairing our erosion, salinity and water problems.
Some of Australia's most prominent corporate identities are also behind Peter and are putting into place, legal entities to oversee the implementation of the 'Natural Sequence Farming' practice.
For example, Gerry Harvey of Harvey Norman fame, has had Peter totally reconstruct parts of his his multi million dollar horse stud property.
The results are nothing short of astonishing! The improvements have added so much to the dollar resale value of the property, let alone the productivity and sustainability of its resources.
Today, he continues to fight the bureaucracies holding back his theories and is insistent that one day his theories will help turn the Australian landscape back to what it was before Europeans came here.
Natural Sequence Farming
ABC's Australian Story - Peter Andrews "Of Droughts and Flooding Rains"
SMH - The natural disaster in our midst
Natural Sequence Farming
conservation
environment
australia
droughts
RT On Air
Saturday, 25 June 2005
Pints and proselytizers - The Andrew Symonds affair
The Andrew Symonds affair
Pints and proselytizers
Dileep Premachandran
June 24, 2005
If you'd been vacationing in the rainforests for a fortnight and came back to see headlines proclaiming that Andrew Symonds was in danger of losing his Cricket Australia contract, you'd be forgiven for thinking the worst - that he'd done a Lee Bowyer (the former Leeds footballer convicted of affray, trashing a McDonald's and much else besides). But when you read on, you found that Symonds' crime was to break curfew and turn up on the morning of a match against Bangladesh with alcohol vapours floating freely around him.
He had spent a Friday night on the tiles, perhaps lulled into a sense of complacency by the identity of his team's opponents on the Saturday. Given that he was apparently in no fit state to play, it was expected that there would be a backlash and a ticking off from the team management.
What was astonishing though was the fact that such a trivial episode - a young man having a drink too many on a Friday night, athlete or not - snowballed into a huge media circus, with plenty of preaching and nauseous holier-than-thou attitudes on display. A quiet disapproving word or two from the captain and coach, and a fine, would have served the purpose far better than a public dressing down.
The fact remains that sportsmen and alcohol are hardly strangers in the night, and most of the game's mythical booze-ups have involved Australian cricketers. And while such binges are far less common in the new professional era, you'll still spot the odd cricketer at the bar on an evening off, just as you might spy a doctor, journalist or accountant.
It's also a well-documented fact that some of the game's legends were more than fond of the grog. Harold Larwood was rumoured to be fond of a pint during the lunch interval, while Gary Sobers' exploits while in the company of mercurial Scottish football legend Jim Baxter are mentioned over the course of an entire chapter - Drunk and Sobers in Nottingham - in Baxter's biography.
In Sunny Days, Sunil Gavaskar talks of how West Indian greats like Rohan Kanhai used to come to his room on the 1971 tour and walk off with the bottles of rum that had been left for the visitors. And going back two decades, Keith Miller - the Errol Flynn of the cricket fields - liked an evening out, often arriving back at the hotel so late that he barely had time to change from dinner jacket to flannels before heading to the ground.
While the fitness trainers of today might tell you that these players could have made even greater use of their talent with a more disciplined lifestyle, it's doubtful whether Sobers, Kanhai, Miller and others like them would have captivated the public so much had they been tucked in bed by 9pm every evening.
The beauty of cricket lies in the fact that it can accommodate an Eddo Brandes, a Merv Hughes and a David Boon, men with far from svelte physiques and a fondness for the lager. Boon is now a national selector, and would no doubt have watched the Symonds story unfold with keen interest, given that he still holds the record for the most beer cans consumed on a flight to the UK from Sydney.
Talk of such athletes being poor role models is also incredibly lame. Young men with money and time to burn, living in a celebrity bubble completely isolated from the harsher realities of life, will always struggle to get a sense of perspective and walk the straight and narrow. For every Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid or Michael Owen, there are likely to be ten Shoaib Akhtars. To expect a community of largely immature folk - "Elite athletes are just big kids at heart," said Greg Chappell in a recent chat with Wisden Asia Cricket - to act as torchbearers for youth is nothing less than scraping the bottom of the barrel, escapism in its worst form.
Symonds let his team-mates down, and paid the price for it. The chances are that he'll think twice before heading into town on the eve of a big game in future. But let's not err on the side of the proselytizers. Symonds didn't assault anyone, nor did he rain down bombs from the sky on innocent civilians. Like Shane Warne, whose peccadilloes don't really concern anyone but himself and his family, all he was guilty of was a loss of self-control. There are worse crimes, and better ways to fill reams of newsprint.
Dileep Premachandran is assistant editor of Cricinfo
Pints and proselytizers
Dileep Premachandran
June 24, 2005
If you'd been vacationing in the rainforests for a fortnight and came back to see headlines proclaiming that Andrew Symonds was in danger of losing his Cricket Australia contract, you'd be forgiven for thinking the worst - that he'd done a Lee Bowyer (the former Leeds footballer convicted of affray, trashing a McDonald's and much else besides). But when you read on, you found that Symonds' crime was to break curfew and turn up on the morning of a match against Bangladesh with alcohol vapours floating freely around him.
He had spent a Friday night on the tiles, perhaps lulled into a sense of complacency by the identity of his team's opponents on the Saturday. Given that he was apparently in no fit state to play, it was expected that there would be a backlash and a ticking off from the team management.
What was astonishing though was the fact that such a trivial episode - a young man having a drink too many on a Friday night, athlete or not - snowballed into a huge media circus, with plenty of preaching and nauseous holier-than-thou attitudes on display. A quiet disapproving word or two from the captain and coach, and a fine, would have served the purpose far better than a public dressing down.
The fact remains that sportsmen and alcohol are hardly strangers in the night, and most of the game's mythical booze-ups have involved Australian cricketers. And while such binges are far less common in the new professional era, you'll still spot the odd cricketer at the bar on an evening off, just as you might spy a doctor, journalist or accountant.
It's also a well-documented fact that some of the game's legends were more than fond of the grog. Harold Larwood was rumoured to be fond of a pint during the lunch interval, while Gary Sobers' exploits while in the company of mercurial Scottish football legend Jim Baxter are mentioned over the course of an entire chapter - Drunk and Sobers in Nottingham - in Baxter's biography.
In Sunny Days, Sunil Gavaskar talks of how West Indian greats like Rohan Kanhai used to come to his room on the 1971 tour and walk off with the bottles of rum that had been left for the visitors. And going back two decades, Keith Miller - the Errol Flynn of the cricket fields - liked an evening out, often arriving back at the hotel so late that he barely had time to change from dinner jacket to flannels before heading to the ground.
While the fitness trainers of today might tell you that these players could have made even greater use of their talent with a more disciplined lifestyle, it's doubtful whether Sobers, Kanhai, Miller and others like them would have captivated the public so much had they been tucked in bed by 9pm every evening.
The beauty of cricket lies in the fact that it can accommodate an Eddo Brandes, a Merv Hughes and a David Boon, men with far from svelte physiques and a fondness for the lager. Boon is now a national selector, and would no doubt have watched the Symonds story unfold with keen interest, given that he still holds the record for the most beer cans consumed on a flight to the UK from Sydney.
Talk of such athletes being poor role models is also incredibly lame. Young men with money and time to burn, living in a celebrity bubble completely isolated from the harsher realities of life, will always struggle to get a sense of perspective and walk the straight and narrow. For every Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid or Michael Owen, there are likely to be ten Shoaib Akhtars. To expect a community of largely immature folk - "Elite athletes are just big kids at heart," said Greg Chappell in a recent chat with Wisden Asia Cricket - to act as torchbearers for youth is nothing less than scraping the bottom of the barrel, escapism in its worst form.
Symonds let his team-mates down, and paid the price for it. The chances are that he'll think twice before heading into town on the eve of a big game in future. But let's not err on the side of the proselytizers. Symonds didn't assault anyone, nor did he rain down bombs from the sky on innocent civilians. Like Shane Warne, whose peccadilloes don't really concern anyone but himself and his family, all he was guilty of was a loss of self-control. There are worse crimes, and better ways to fill reams of newsprint.
Dileep Premachandran is assistant editor of Cricinfo
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